Catalysts are substances that vary the speed of a chemical reaction without being consumed therein. Once a chemical reaction has been produced the catalyzer is recovered unaltered; therefore, the catalyzer does not disrupt the processes that ought to be a balance chemical situation. It only varies the speed in which the balance is achieved.
The catalytic converter is a post treatment device for exhaust gasses with aims to take low molecular stability gasses, which are harmful to humans and the environment, to convert them in high molecular stability products and with almost no reactivity in normal pressure and temperature conditions.
The inner workings of catalyzer is based in two chemical reactions which are oxidation and reduction. The oxidizing reactions react by means of the platinum-palladium and the reduction action by means of the platinum-rhodium. Before leaving onto the atmosphere exhaust gasses go through a catalyzer, where polluters are eliminated through a chemical process and become harmless substances present in the atmosphere such as Nitrogen, water and carbon dioxide. Exhaust gasses are forced to go through the interior in a turbulent flow, thus achieving a better contact between gasses and the precious metals of the catalytic converter, thus improving the conditions for a transfer of masses and elevating the conversion efficiency.
The catalytic converter is mounted on the exhaust pipe, immediately after the exhaust collector for gasses maintain a high temperature there. This heat energy goes through the catalyzer and raises its own temperature, paramount circumstance to achieve maximum performance in this device, which reaches the 400° and 700° centigrade.
As the exhaust gasses go through the catalyzer, they react with the precious metal covering and transform in inert gasses such as water vapor, Nitrogen and carbon dioxide, less harmful to health.
The actions that each catalytic metal performs in the system are as follows:
Rhodium
It's responsible of NOx (nitrogen oxide) decomposition into oxygen and nitrogen, harmless particle that are natural components of the atmosphere.
Palladium
This metal is a catalyzing oxidant, which acts upon CO (carbon monoxide) particles breaking their saturated bond due to high temperature in CO2 (carbon dioxide), harmless particles to the general public, but these at the same time tend to retain the sun's ultraviolet rays, causing global warming.
Platinum
Oxidizing metal, this one is implemented to break the saturated combinations of CO and of the unburnt hydrocarbons in order to turn them into more oxygen, water vapor and carbon dioxide.
Currently there are vehicle catalyzers that reduce polluting gasses, but these begin to work after the vehicle has run a considerable distance in order to achieve the needed working temperature, this is a heat-journey relation that is directly proportional to the environment temperature of the time, and therefore, depending the position one might be regarding the developed temperature in said place will be the time that could further prolong the distance required to reach the temperature. For instance, the current catalytic converters might take 8 to 15 mins or a 10 km journey, which at the time is an irrelevant thing, but factoring approximately 1000 million vehicles that day after day turn their engine (7), the amount of toxic gasses that are directly released into the atmosphere would be approximately 10,000 km daily (assuming that every vehicle has catalyzers).
The original system of the vehicle catalytic converter works in high temperature as the exhaust gasses that go through the monolith and transmit their heat based on conduction. If this metals that undertake the catalytic work are not in a temperature range above the 400° C. they become useless. A normal vehicle takes 10 km or 15 mins after having started the combustion engine (7) which makes the vehicle expel untreated exhaust gasses. The pollution emitted in the timeframe is subject to the temperature the catalyzer has at the time the engine (7) is started and taking into consideration the amount of vehicles the run daily around the world (1000 million approximately), it is an excessive pollution and that can be avoided.
The automatic heating catalyzer (2) of this invention reduces that timeframe by implementing heat resistors directly on the monolith, which leads to having the catalytic converter take approximately a kilometer to reach working temperature which optimizes it in over 90%.